| Albuquerque, NM |
Colorado just got blasted with a ‘winter’ storm that dumped two to three feet of snow in the mountain ranges that I had planned on hiking.
As if an absurd amount of snow close to June weren’t enough they’re also dealing with downed trees, power lines and rockslides.
So sadly, very sadly, Colorado joins most of my California leg on the postponed list of this trip.
And thus I find myself back in New Mexico where, the good news is there’s plenty of high peaks in the Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos regions and the better news is that I’m back in the warm weather!
You see as I’ve grown older, I’ve become much less tolerant of our Northeast weather. It’s not the snow as much as it is the dogged, never-ending cold and as is becoming more and more apparent to me, the lack of sun.
These few weeks in the West mostly full of warmth and sun! have spoiled me and there’s going to need to be a reckoning prior to next winter. What they may ultimately turn out to be I don’t know, but after seeing the other side of the coin I don’t know that I have the mental fortitude to hibernate for several months again.
Anyways…
I went into this trip assuming that one of the high points would be meeting folks, and indeed it has been.
I honestly couldn’t count the number of great conversations I’ve had with people, who only moments before we started talking, would have best been called complete strangers.
I don’t know that I’ve ever been previously classified as a ‘people person’, and I also don’t know that I’ve all of a sudden become one. But, I will say that I’ve really, really enjoyed these conversations. More so than maybe I even thought I would.
They’ve added to the trip, made me laugh, (almost) made me cry, given me tons of local insights and other insider information and also given me an awful lot to think about.
I’m appreciative for them and I aim to continue them as much as reasonably possible, once I re-enter ‘real-life’ in a couple of weeks.
That said, let me share with you some of the most recent, most memorable ones.
When I arrive at a new hotel, which is almost every night on this trip, I follow a pretty set routine of getting the car unpacked, room setup, etc.
Honestly after some 35+ separate stays, I’ve got it down to a bit of a science; and the routine really stays the same hotel after hotel after hotel.
So I was in the midst of my routine a couple of days ago in Farmington, NM, just having collected my recyclables, when I noticed a man walking toward me.
He asked me for a quarter to catch the bus. I said sure thing, and he said he was surprised because he’d approached a couple other people and they told him ‘no’.
He figured he must have looked ‘scary’ and asked me if he looked scary.
Dressed in a button down shirt and baggy khakis, the honest answer was no, and I told him so.
He said he was looking to take the bus to the store so he could get a drink, which didn’t seem to be very cost effective to me, so I offered him bottle of water, and he heartedly accepted. Gulping it down it like he hadn’t had much in the way of liquid anytime recently.
We got to talking, I introduced myself and he did the same. Stevie was his name.
We talked about why I was in town, the length of the trip, where I’d been most recently, etc.
I told him the Wegmans bottle of water that I’d given him was a special one as it was one of the last remnants of a case I’d bought the day before leaving on this trip. Meaning it had some 6000 miles on it.
He said it had tasted ‘special’. I honestly couldn’t tell if he was serious.
He gave me a couple of local recommendations for hiking and let me know that one of them Aztec Ruins National Monument, he was unable to pursue himself.
Naturally I asked why and he said that as a Native American he would be ‘cursed’ if he set foot upon that land. This time he was definitely being serious.
We talked for a bit longer before we broke it up and as he was walking away, he suddenly turned back towards me, grabbed my right hand in both of his and said what turned out to be a Native American blessing.
It meant, ‘Safe Travels’.
Note: I apologize for using the generic ‘Native American’. I didn’t in the moment have the foresight to ask him of his tribal affiliation.
Heading down to breakfast yesterday morning, I got on the elevator with a rather haggard looking older gentleman.
While riding down in that awkward few seconds before the doors opened to the first floor, he broke the silence by blurting out….
‘Cigarette Time!’
In an exclamatory and delicious way that a child might call out when seeing the ice cream truck start coming down the street.
And then, seemingly without even a hint of irony, he proceeded to be ravaged by a fit of rather awful sounding coughs for a good ten seconds…
My Sandia Mountains hike yesterday was the longest and hardest I’ve done, and after hiking out the last few miles with no water, I was absolutely toast.
After I got to the end of the trail, I let out some combination of war cry / utter exhaustion / drowning animal sound and I think I startled a couple that happened to be standing there a bit.
The gentleman asked me if I was OK – probably because I imagine I looked like death warmed up – and I explained I really just needed water ASAP. He asked if I had some and I told him I had a cooler in the car.
After I resuscitated myself some and felt a bit better, we got to talking as he was setting up for a barbecue with his family.
A nicer guy would be hard to find.
After introducing me to the three kids and his girlfriend, Michelle he spied the license plate on my car which spurred a conversation about my trip, and some tales of trips of his, including his time in Alaska, a huge bucket lister of mine.
He offered me some food, which I reluctantly declined, while sadly cutting our conversation short, as I had to continue to work myself back into some semblance of a human being, and quick.
So we parted ways and I was left pleased with yet another encounter of genuinely wonderful people that I’ve met along this trip.
A few days ago I woke up in Blanding, UT and went to one of the sorriest excuses for a continental breakfast I’ve been to on this trip. (A fortunate rarity)
After attempting to drink coffee that tasted like it was run through someone’s dirty gym socks, I sought out the local cafe, Yak’s for something that I imagined had no choice but to be better.
And the coffee definitely was. The breakfast I can’t fairly judge because I hardly ate it.
Let me explain…
The restaurant was fairly quiet and I sat across from a couple of tables of locals, at which one had a lively pseudo-political conversation going on. I say pseudo because it was being led (dominated) by an elderly and spirited man who seemed to be holding court over the other three men.
He had complete control of the conversation in the same way in which a professor, judge or some other arbiter might and he immediately caught my eye, because despite his small stature he had a terrific presence to him; which is something I always am enviously appreciative of.
The quartet broke up, the other three men left first and as the leader of the pack was putting on his coat, I don’t recall exactly what I said to I believe it was a remark of agreement with his stance of the President’s tariffs.
That few second interaction kicked off what may have been one of the best conversations with another person in the entirety of my life.
Note: I’m going to call the man ‘George’ because he asked that his name and picture not be posted online.
We talked about the other men he was with, who they were, his relationships to them and the fact that they were ‘locals’ and he, though having lived in Blanding for years now, was not – and mostly the reasons for that involved politics and religion.
And then – and I have no idea what engendered this – started talking about the death of his son some 55 years prior.
My friends, it was one of the most engrossing stories I’ve ever heard. He had me absolutely spellbound and I don’t know that during the entirety of that part of the ‘conversation’ I said more than a handful of words.
His son has been horribly burned by a friend playing with gasoline and despite a valiant effort from the child ultimately succumbed to his injuries.
I won’t go into any more details out of respect for his privacy but it’s a story full of tragedy, love, emotion and reminiscence.
Despite the passage of more than a half of a century, it’s as if the whole event happened yesterday and this man despite his age of 86 was able to fully recall every excruciating detail.
Remember the movie Titanic? When the elderly Rose is telling the end of her story to the ship’s crew and everyone is completely, emotionally invested and transfixed? That was it right there.
I am not an emotional man, but the breadth, clarity and detail in that story had me on the verge of tears – as did the fact that at the end, he said that he almost never tells that story but for some reason ‘felt comfortable with me’.
That to me was a very high honor.
My breakfast had come earlier in the conversation and though I pecked a couple of bites early on, all of a sudden an hour had passed and it was no longer looking all that appetizing, nor was I all that hungry.
By the time two hours had passed, my planned hike for that morning was shot, and I was 100% OK with that.
For there are not a great many times in life you get to have that quality of conversation with anyone; let alone a complete stranger, in a strange place and town.
As we parted ways in the parking lot, he introduced me to his dogs, told me the story of elderly dogs with an elderly man, told me a couple more stories and we finally, shook hands and sadly, parted ways.
Reach out and talk to folks my friends. Odds are good that you’ll quite often find yourself very pleasantly surprised.
Things I think, I think:
1. I read the Mount Everest stories this week with great sadness.
Clearly there is always going to be a extreme risk associated with high-mountain climbing, but 10 deaths in a week seems well beyond extreme. I’m no expert in the topic but in reading on the deaths it seems like more than a little bit of hubris, arrogance and greed are involved. The climbing window is absurdly short at the top of the world, but it would seem like the below picture is begging for something to change.
2. I understand we’ve generally drastically reduced the definition of what’s acceptable dress in public, but don’t come to breakfast in the hotel, in your pajamas.
As comfortable as you may be with yourself, a communal breakfast room at a hotel isn’t meant to be your personal PJ party. You look ridiculous.
3. To me the very definition of an oaf would be:
The man at dinner the other night who I overheard saying to his female partner. ‘Do you want me to pay for dinner?’ She sounded stunned and the best she could apparently muster in the moment was ‘Sure…if you want to.’
And chivalry very awkwardly took one on the chin.
4. Be nice to your waiter / waitress. Tell them that you ‘appreciate the service’. It’ll make them smile. I promise.
5. Why are car alarms still a thing? They’re quite good at being triggered randomly, or even worse, by their absent minded owners, but does anyone actually pay attention to them any longer?
6. I miss Heinz ketchup. It’s availability on this trip has been curiously few and far between.
BTW – Heinz has a newer ‘Simply’ version made without corn syrup, that to me tastes even better than the original.
The Long Road 